Karen's Journey

What's a Tofurkey Day race without a little -- or a lot -- of snow? I ran a 10km race on Thanksgiving morning. Actually it was billed as a 10km, and then sometime after registration but before packet pickup, changed to a "10K-plus." Ten kilometers is approximately equivalent to 6.2 U.S. miles. This one would be closer to 6.5 miles we were told, due to a change in the location of the start line. Great. I'd been running six miles in my training runs, knowing that if I could get through six miles, the final point-two would be an adrenaline-filled surge to the finish line. Now that was going to turn into two full laps of an outdoor track. For athletes other than Olympic marathoners, that is a long way to kick. I sucked it up and set off with 450 other runners in a blinding snowstorm and temperatures in the teens. At least the wind wasn't blowing -- the weather forecast had predicted near zero wind chills. In comparison, 17 degrees felt absolutely balmy. My ...

Letter to Santa reading comprehension assignment. I think my head might explode. T attends public school. Public school. Yet every year, the entire month of December is devoted to lessons with Christmas themes. The anticipation of Christmas has him unhinged. Does it every year. We deliberately avoid Elf on a Shelf and advent calendars and advent wreaths. We don't count down the days to Christmas -- although no doubt he's doing it in his head -- we try to keep on an even keel and not deviate from routine any more than possible. I could have throttled the kindergarten teacher when T arrived home with a bell made out of green construction paper to which there was attached a strand of red and green construction paper loops. The instructions that came home with it told us to have him remove one loop each day until he removed the last loop -- that would be Christmas Eve! Woo hoo -- downward spiral child! And that is not a new yoga position. This year I warned th...

The context in which this year's story takes place can be read here:  A Vist With St. Nick 2012 Today was once again Breakfast With Santa day at our local fire department. Last year's visit was a spectacular failure.  Christmas season is T's traumaversary time combined with holiday excitement dysregulation -- let's just call it a perfect storm--and my best method of coping would probably be to just hide out in the house with the kid for a month, emerging after New Year's Day, but I can't home school, and they send these kids home with the flyers in their folders and they pull them out and show them to you, begging to go to see Santa, and there's no pretending you don't know when or where it is. I find myself longing for the day he no longer believes in Santa -- I've never encouraged it -- and then I realize I'm wishing his life away, so I stop myself. He went from a tiny four-year-old to an almost-as-tall-as-me-eight-year-old in the b...